there has been an election. but it does reprise a lot of the arguments from the negotiations between the president and john boehner in the summer of 2011. it's not something that really should be laughed off the page. i mean, the most difficult thing for republicans is accepting an increase in the top rate for the top earners in the tax rate which they don't want to do in this proposal but which they don't ever have to vote for in order to have it happen. i think somehow that will be a key element. >> it's a bad thing that the white house immediately dismissed -- i mean it couldn't have been three hours, four hours maybe. >> i think the president has decided to take a very different approach than he did in 2011. he's not going to put on the table what he thinks the final deal is. he's going to say no, he's going to negotiate it a tough way. the proposal and i hope ron is right and i kind of thing that in the end, as with t.a.r.p. in 2008, when everybody rebelled, and then the markets crashed they got to the righ